Photo Blog

 J and I heard loud drumming coming from the street about 2 weeks ago and went outside to find this mini parade. I think they were welcoming the Lunar New Year by going around to most businesses and singing and drumming to them for about 5 minutes

Bungeoppang on the street corner. It's a fried dessert with a cream filling. We got this after we went see the new Frozen movie

The neighborhood of Gohyeon and mountains in the background

 We haven't eaten here yet but want to try it! I think it's just a Korean barbecue place

 My 14 year old kids are writing essays in my Writing Class and will present them in J's Speech Class. I helped one boy brainstorm ideas on his superhero that he had to invent. My example is at the top

 This is from tonight's class. We read a passage and there are usually a lot of new words for the kids. To make it easy, I write the Korean word on the board for each English word. This is an example of Korean characters. I'm getting faster at writing them and sounding them out. One of the students wanted to get in on the photo too!

Fellow = saram

Election = seongeo

Sculpture Park and P.O.W. Camp

A few weekends ago, J and I hung out with two of our college-aged female students, Hui Su (he-sue) and Da Young (dah-yung). We met them in the morning and took a local bus to the nearby village of Jangseuongpo. They said that we were going to go for a hike, but it was really a stroll on the city and country roads. We first went almost straight up this one road because the incline was so severe. J laughed at us after the first 5 minutes, because the three of us girls were chatting and charging up the hill not realizing how fast we were going. Then we got tired and had to slow to a mere slog. After leaving the city area we came around a bend in the road and saw wonderful views of the coast. It was so gorgeous but these photos can't do it justice. It was icy cold and so windy from the coast! It would've been awesome to have been down on the shore and see the waves crashing against the rocks. We forgot the name of the little island in this first photo. I tried to capture it in the photos but failed, but the sun kept shining through the clouds like a spotlight on the waves and lighting up a section of them. It was so beautiful because it made the water glow like molten silver.

We turned left after this view and walked down a country road following the coast. I can't wait to go back in the spring and summer because the sidewalk was lined with Japanese Cherry Blossom trees. I will post a blog about that in a few months. There was a nice sidewalk to get away from the traffic and outdoor workout equipment along the way. Workout equipment here in Korea in nice because they put the machines in convenient places that people go to walk or exercise (on mountain tops too!). I've seen equipment like this before in the US, but only a few pieces at each park. Here, they put about 5-10 machines at each place that they are putting the equipment. When we hiked Guksabong (bong means mountain) they had such cool machines to help you stretch and exercise. I will do a blog about that one day too.

Da Young, Hui Su, and J

So we walked for a long time along this road and coastline, maybe 45 minutes, until we came to a sculpture park. I'm not sure if the park commemorated anything or had any special meaning, but it was pretty cool. Of course, the first thing that caught my eye was the funky bathroom!

It's a snail with a fountain on the right (shaped like a black seal with a blue ball)

I bet this park will be a perfect place to come and read on the grass this summer

The village/city of Neunpo in the background

Korean graffiti

Hui Su and Da Young wondered why I stopped to take a photo of this, but I thought it was cool. I could make a stab at translating the characters, but to my eyes it doesn't follow the rules of the Korean language. I am beginning to learn the Korean characters and almost have the alphabet down-pat! Pronunciation is next.

After we left the sculpture park we went down into another village that was near the park, called Neunpo. We got some delicious food that we all shared, but I forgot to take a photo of our food. It's considered nice to share food because it means that you are eating with friends, and don't you sometimes share your food to some extent with friends or your significant other. Then we took two busses to get to Gohyeon, which was maybe 25 minutes away. The girls thought (rightly so) that we should see the P.O.W. camp while we were living in Korea. They wanted us to know their history and the horrors of the war. J has personally (I think for school) done extensive researching on the Korean War, but I was almost ignorant of ANYTHING besides knowing that there was a war in Korea by that name! It was very enlightening for me and sad to see the truth of what happened and I went home after it and did my own research on the war. 

This is what Wikipedia had to say about Geoje Island-- "Out of a total of 170,000 prisoners of war about 85% were from North Korea, and the rest from China. The (camp) is meant to be reminiscent of the daily lives of the prisoners. The theme stresses the humane treatment of the internees."

The P.O.W. camps were all over the area that we live in now, Okpo, and far beyond that. While at the park, we also saw an interactive movie with shaking seats and, supposedly, wind (which I didn't feel). The movie showed a story about two soldier friends from North Korea who fought in the war. It was sad because one of the young soldiers dies in the end right in front of his mother just as he was about to escape the camp. He was an anti-communist living in a communist camp and was being helped by the American and South Korean soldiers to escape this very communist camp and get to another camp (nearby) that was anti-communist. There were many, many different camps in this area. Maybe 100 or so guys to each camp. Alliances began to form very quickly in each camp and blood ran hot, so each camp became either anti-communist or pro-communist. The North Koreans and Chinese living in these camps would kill each other if they weren't in agreement with them. Also the North Koreans and Chinese were extremely divided about repatriation. The pro-communists wanted to be repatriated to their home country after the war, meaning they wanted to go home. The anti-communists knew they couldn't go back after being so outspoken against communism and they didn't WANT to go back to North Korea/China, so they were against repatriation and many stayed in South Korea or other countries after the war. So this young soldier was murdered by his fellows North Koreans while escaping over the barbed wire tall fence. Of course, this movie was just a fictionalized drama about the war, but I think it still captured the tone of what was going on in the camps at the time.

And now, ziplines! "What do ziplines have to do with a P.O.W. camp?" you might ask. Well, apparently during the war some prisoners attempted an escape from one of the camps. It didn't work, but today we have the pleasure of going on an awesome zipline tour right inside a P.O.W. camp. I tried to get Da Young to give it a try, and after I agreed to go first, she said that she would do it. J also tried it but Hui Su couldn't be convinced to go on it. It was pretty cool and had some actual drops on it. I've been on one other zipline, but I've never heard of a zipline having drops on it like a roller coaster. It was slightly sketchy when I'd zip around a corner and a tree limb would be maybe 4 feet away from me. I tucked my legs in under me after that because a broken leg is never fun. I can see my mom cringing at this point and my dad laughing. We thought the cost for the tour was 9,000 won ($9), but their machine that allowed automatic retrieval of the gear was broken, so it was free if we carried our harness and 5 pound gear back up to the start of the tour. I think it was worth it!

 And, yes, that IS a wobbly step stool that we launched from!

I asked the attendant guy if I could jump off of the stool to get some speed but he said no, and to just sit and go.

B and Da Young

Monks on the Mountain, Death Scooters in the Valley

Mountain Monks:

While hiking up Guksabong (the local hiking mountain) this past Thursday, on the first day of our Lunar New Year holiday, I saw an elder and younger man out splitting wood and hauling away tree branches. B and I had seen them a couple weeks ago cutting and splitting wood. I wanted to stop but she thought it might be strange so we went on. This time round though, it was just me and I wanted to help split the wood they had cut up.

On another occasion, I heard the wooden "clunk, clunk, clunk" of a Buddhist monk's call to prayer (this sound comes from striking a wooden mallet on essentially a wooden "bell") followed by a chanted prayer echoing up the mountain. If you've never experienced this, it is altogether mesmerizing and mystifying. Something about the resonance and rhythm command the attention of your ears.

Anyway, as I was saying, I wanted to help split wood. I walked right up past a building, said 여보세요Anyong-ha-se-yo (hello in Korean) and played charades with the old and young guy to convey that I wanted to "try" to split their firewood. They were very concerned and cautioned me at least half a dozen times to be careful and how to swing.

After splitting three rounds, they cautioned me to not swing with all my force, "no use hard chop." This was foreboding; I broke their splitting maul on the very next piece of wood! I should mention though that this "maul" had a good splitting shaped head but the handle was puny and felt like a relatively soft wood. It was no problem though. The younger monk (I learned quickly that the place is, in fact, a Buddhist Temple) said, "no problem, no problem my uncle want fix anyway" while the elder monk was laughing and saying "too strong, too strong" and flexing his arms.

Elder Monk, in just a few minutes, retrieved a new handle that had obviously been hand cut and hewn from a shed. He deftly trimmed it to fit, removed the broken handle from the axe head, installed the new handle and had us splitting wood again. During the course of splitting about a cord of wood, they brought out coffee and cake; watermelon, grapes, and Asian fig*; Makgeolli (a traditional Korean rice based drink; somewhere between a beer and wine) and ground rice formed into balls, cooked and dusted with… something; and a wonderful rice soup to share. This was a beautiful experience and I will go back often to visit and help. I hope to help in their garden and maybe be allowed to grow some vegetables for B and I!

Death Scooters:

Every time we head out the door of our apartment building, we step basically right onto a street just a few feet from a "Y" intersection. With the way folks drive here in the "dirty south" of Korea, we have learned a Pavlovian fear response from the sound of a scooter. More than a few times, and already far too many times, B and/or I have been buzzed by maniacal scooter drivers buzzing by, often through stopped traffic down the center line of the road, or ON the sidewalk. Delivery drivers for pizza places, Chinese restaurants, and McDonald's seem to be the worst.

They'll run out the door of the restaurant, toss the food in a nifty retrofitted "heater box" on the back of the scooter, and away they go to deliver a hot meal…apparently to people at risk of immediate death, the Korean mafia, a last meal request with a time crunch, or some other high risk issue. This can be the only logical explanation for me thinking that Cake's "The Distance" cued at "they deftly maneuver and muscle for rank" and an overlay of SilverChair's "Suicidal Dream" should somehow be played as theme and caution music. I know I do, and I bet B also puckers, cringes, and helplessly hope while jumping out of the way as they come ripping past us.

Ok, more later y'all. Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments if there are things you would like to know!

The Proper Way

This past Wednesday one of my middle school writing classes was learning about "procedures." We had to write a procedure of "how to grow tomatoes" or something equally boring. We had to come up with a goal (How To _"), list of requirements, steps, and test (Enjoy Your _!). One of the students suggested that we write about how to cook ramyeon, something they all knew. Now, here in SK they don't say ramen noodle (or even raymon noodle, which is how I've always said it) they spell and pronounce it ramyeon. This seemed an easy enough procedure and something that we could do together on the board as a group. South Koreans make ramyeon differently than we do back home. It tastes so much better! When they put the noodles in the water to boil they also put in the seasoning packets. In America we would usually wait until the noodles were cooked to put the packets in. Let me tell you, the taste is so very different. Apparently when you "cook" the spices into the water it almost becomes infused with the flavor and deepens it. They also add a raw egg to the soup after the noodles are cooked. They just pour it in and immediately stir it after they turn the heat off. Almost like an egg drop soup. Very yummy! After I had written our procedure on the board, I told the kids the way that I usually made it and, boy, were they shocked. They had playful horrified expressions on their face like I had destroyed the soup entirely by cooking it that way. It was actually a really good class overall, because they were engaged in what we were doing and we all laughed together. I usually take a while to get comfortable with new people (unlike Joshua, whom all the kids love), but this class showed that it's getting better. I was engaged too and laughing with them and making jokes. It's hard to make jokes with elementary kids who understand about 3 out of 10 words you're saying, and middle and high school kids so sullen their faces drip with boredom. I'm like the teacher we've all had who's kind of strict at the beginning of the year to establish rules and respect, but as the year progresses everyone has fun because the kids know boundaries and I'm more comfortable.

Next time you make ramen noodles at home think about this post and (as the "test" part of the procedure that we wrote in class says) "Enjoy Your Ramyeon!"